Undying

by V. K. Forrest

  How the hell did a man like Crazy Teddy, Moon Boy, the Buried Alive Killer manage to buy a gun like that? It wasn’t for hunting, or target practice; it was a gun meant to kill—kill people.

  “It was purchased perfectly legally,” he said, seeming to know exactly what she was thinking. “The silencer.” He looked apologetic. “Not so legal.” He turned it in his hand, admiring it. “You’d be amazed what can be bought over the Internet.”

  Macy shivered. She’d turned the air-conditioning up before stepping into the shower because she’d gotten hot, walking around town. Sort of saying good-bye, she saw in retrospect.

  But she’d thought leaving would involve a couple of good-byes, a farewell wave, one more Oreo Cookie Blizzard for the road, not a handgun with a silencer.

  Macy was late for Arlan’s surf and turf dinner. She’d be even later now.

  In the back of her mind, she wondered if he would come looking for her. But she knew he wouldn’t. He would follow the rules they had laid down from the beginning, rules she had set in place, and that would mean not coming to look for her. Not at least for many hours, maybe a day, maybe two.

  Her gaze shifted to the phone beside the bed. Next to it had been her cell phone. She looked back at him.

  “Of course you can’t make calls. Who are you going to call, your mommy?” He chuckled at his stupid, cruel joke.

  Macy walked to the dresser and opened the top drawer. She let her towel fall.

  Teddy surprised her by jumping off the bed and turning away, both hands up in defense. He still held the pistol. “Please…please don’t do that. I won’t tolerate that kind of licentious behavior from you, any longer, young lady.”

  She ignored him. First she stepped into a pair of gym shorts. Then a faded blue T-shirt. What did one wear to one’s death?

  She pulled the towel off her head and let her wet hair fall over her back.

  “You going to do it here, or somewhere else?” She picked her brush up off the dresser, feeling oddly detached from the whole situation.

  “Going to do what?”

  She turned to face him, giving him a look as if what she spoke of was obvious.

  He gasped. “Oh! No, no, Marceline, dearest. I don’t want to kill you.” He took a step toward her, lowering the gun to his side. “I’ve come for you. It’s time.”

  She held the brush at her side, looking at the madman who didn’t appear all that mad, except for the pistol with the silencer at his side. And the Velcro sandals. “It’s time for what?”

  “My love, for us to be together, of course.” The expression on his face softened. “Forever,” he breathed.

  She turned around to face the mirror and run the brush through her wet, tangled hair. “You have got to be shitting me,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Hey, hey, turn around.”

  She could see his reflection in the mirror. He was waving the pistol at her. “We have no time for grooming. We have to go. I’ll allow you to pack your bag if you hurry. But we have to go. It’s a long ride and the storm is rolling in fast. The roads will be slick and dangerous.”

  Macy had always assumed that when he came for her, he would just kill her. It had never occurred to her that he might kidnap her. She tried not to think about why he would take her or what he was going to do. She just needed to figure how she was going to get away from him without putting anyone else in danger. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  He lifted her knapsack off the floor and tentatively offered it to her, a glowing smile on his face. “Home, of course, darling.”

  “I’ll take Marvin Gardens.” Kaleigh, lying on her stomach on the carpet in her parents’ basement, handed over the paper money. Her mom had been annoyed that her friends hadn’t even arrived until nine and Monopoly games could go on for hours. But Kaleigh’s dad had convinced his wife it was perfectly safe to go to bed and leave the “young folks” to play a board game in the basement on a rainy night.

  “Stay in the house and don’t wreck anything,” her dad had warned.

  “No problem, Dad,” had been Kaleigh’s response. Where had he thought she was going to go in the rain?

  “You can’t buy Marvin Gardens. I’ve got Ventnor and Atlantic,” Pete, Katy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, protested.

  Like Kaleigh and Rob, Pete and Katy were life mates. But sept rules didn’t require that they date exclusively while teenagers, only that they pair off as adults. Katy broke up with Pete at least once a month, just to show she could, but they always ended up back together again after a few days of drama.

  “Too bad for you, Petey.” Kaleigh plucked the card from Rob. Rob was serving as the banker because everyone agreed he was least likely to steal money from the till.

  “I hate it when she calls me Petey,” Pete told Katy.

  “Too bad for you, Petey,” Katy mimicked Kaleigh. But then, to appease him, she leaned over and nipped at his ear.

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to be drawing blood,” Pete complained, but then his tone turned daring. “Not unless it’s right here.” He exposed his neck and he and Katy giggled.

  “My turn.” Rob scooped up the dice, obviously uncomfortable with the exchange.

  Rob knew he was a vampire and had been told what it entailed, but Kaleigh sensed that he didn’t entirely understand the innate craving for blood that he would develop over time. That, she knew, would come whether the desire was wanted or not.

  “Come on, Pennsylvania Railroad.” Rob blew on the dice before rolling them.

  “Anyone want something to drink?” Kaleigh got up to go to the mini refrigerator her parents kept in the basement.

  “I’ll take a vodka and cranberry,” Pete snickered.

  Ignoring him, Kaleigh opened the door. “We’ve got water, Coke, and Gatorade.”

  “Okay, Gatorade,” Pete called. “Red, if you’ve got it.”

  “Water, please,” Katy ordered.

  “Rob?” Kaleigh leaned down and reached into the refrigerator, intending to grab the bottles.

  Just as she bent forward, she grew light-headed. At the same instance, thunder cracked outside and she saw a flash of light through one of the basement’s uncovered windows. “Whoa.” She tried to straighten, but another flash blinded her. This time it was not lightning; it was in the room. Behind the light she saw the silhouettes of two people, people who were not in the room with her.

  “No,” Kaleigh groaned, pressing her hand to the wall to steady herself. These flash forwards, as Katy had started calling them, were getting annoying. Kaleigh wasn’t in the mood for this. She didn’t want to be the town’s wisewoman tonight. She just wanted to play Monopoly with her friends and make out with Rob on the couch after Katy and Pete went home.

  “You okay?” she heard Rob’s voice from what seemed a good distance off, though she knew he was only a few feet away.

  Kaleigh still felt dizzy. The room spun. She saw the silhouettes again, from the back. They were in a car, these two people. It was like Kaleigh was in the backseat. She smelled the rain, heard the slap of windshield wipers.

  She also felt the fear. Cold, shivering fear.

  “Macy?” she whispered.

  “Kaleigh.” Rob grabbed her arm and she clung to him for support. But she couldn’t look at Rob, only at the car seat and the people in front of her.

  It was Arlan’s human friend, Macy…she had entered the car against her will.

  Kaleigh slowly turned her head, as if she could somehow get a better look at the person on the passenger side. Suddenly she smelled a stench that startled her so badly that she pulled back.

  “Kaleigh?” Rob’s voice again. Almost frantic now. “Katy! Katy get over here.”

  Kaleigh smelled wet fur and something like dog urine. She squeezed her eyes shut, more than just a little freaked out.

  But the images didn’t dissolve.

  She saw Macy’s wet hair and her pale skin as she turned to look at the passenger. He was holding a gun on her. Macy w
as trying to be brave, but she was scared. Scared she was going to die. Kaleigh looked up into the rearview mirror in her mind’s eye and caught a glimpse of the man.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed. Her eyes flew open. The images vanished. Rob stood on one side of her and Katy on the other, each holding one of her arms, staring at her with big, startled eyes.

  “Another vision?” Katy asked.

  Kaleigh pressed her lips together and nodded as she fought to prevent Macy’s emotions from becoming her own. “I…I have to find Arlan,” she said in a half whisper. “Now.” She looked at Pete. “Can you take me in my parents’ minivan? To Arlan?”

  “You can’t just call him?” Katy asked.

  Kaleigh shook her head. She had to go. She didn’t know why, but she had to.

  “Kaleigh?” Rob gazed into her eyes.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured, trying to smile so he wouldn’t be scared. She freed her hand from Katy’s grasp and turned and smoothed his cheek with her fingertips. He needed a shave. Stray whiskers were sprouting here and there, as they first did in early puberty. She remembered far in the recesses of her mind that she enjoyed Rob’s face a little scratchy against her skin. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to this,” she told Rob gently.

  He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “You need to go see Arlan?”

  She nodded.

  Rob glanced over his shoulder at Pete and then at Kaleigh again. “Okay, but I’m going, too.”

  “Me, too!” Katy cried, acting as if this was some great adventure.

  Still unsteady on her feet, Kaleigh allowed Rob to lead her up the stairs. The four teens were quiet in the dark kitchen. Kaleigh snatched her mother’s key chain, the one with the blue rubber Smurf on it, and they slipped out the back door, one after the other.

  A hard rain pelted and thunder rumbled. Lightning streaked the sky a few miles in the distance.

  They piled into the minivan. Pete was the only one of them who could legally drive unchaperoned. Not that that was going to help if her parents found out they had “borrowed” the car.

  “Arlan’s?” Pete asked, backing cautiously down the driveway. He didn’t turn on the headlights until they were half a block away from the house. In the front passenger seat, Kaleigh turned to peer back, but saw no light in the upstairs window. With any luck at all, they’d be back in twenty minutes and her parents would be none-the-wiser. “Yeah. Arlan’s,” she told Pete as she faced forward again.

  But halfway there, speeding down the wet street, Kaleigh got the strangest feeling. A voice in her head, but not a voice. A command so strong, she had to obey it. “No, no turn here,” she ordered Pete.

  Pete squealed wheels, making the sharp left.

  “You’re going to get us in trouble.” Katy slapped Pete’s arm from the backseat. “Slow down.”

  “The Lighthouse Inn,” Kaleigh told him. She didn’t know why, but she had to go to the hotel.

  Speeding only a little, Pete had her there in less than five minutes. The instant they pulled up in front of the hotel, Kaleigh knew why she had been sent here. The voice had been right. The voice was a good thing.

  Arlan’s truck was pulled catty-corner into a parking space at the end of the parking lot. Kaleigh jumped out of the van and ran down the sidewalk. Before she reached the parking lot, she saw Arlan standing in the rain. He was on his cell phone.

  Kaleigh rushed toward him. Her hair was getting wetter by the second. Soon, it would be plastered to her face, which was really annoying because she’d spent an hour straightening it before Rob arrived tonight.

  “Macy’s in trouble,” she yelled, running across the parking lot toward Arlan. Her lavender flip-flops made a slip-slapping sound on the wet pavement.

  “Hold on,” Arlan said into the phone. “It’s Kaleigh.” He lowered the phone, listening. “You know something about Macy?”

  “I saw her. She’s in trouble. She’s in a car with this…this—” Kaleigh didn’t know what to say because she didn’t know who or what the thing was.

  “You saw her?” Arlan asked. He was wetter than she was. It was odd, but with his T-shirt plastered to his chest and transparent and his wet hair curling in tendrils at his chin, he didn’t look any older to Kaleigh than Rob did. “I didn’t see her, see her,” Kaleigh explained, trying to calm down. “It was a vision. I haven’t really been telling people, but I’m getting the visions,” she confessed, suddenly close to tears.

  “Kaleigh had a vision,” Arlan said into the phone. “Macy’s in a car with someone. It has to be him.”

  “It has to be who?” Kaleigh asked. Her heart was pounding and the rain was beating on her face. “Arlan, this was the weirdest thing—”

  But Arlan wasn’t listening to her, he was listening to…Fia. It was Fia on the other end of the line. Of course it was. When he spoke with that tone, it was always Fia. Had been for centuries.

  “Her car’s not here. They took it. I’m sure they took it. Mrs. Cahall’s nephew saw them leave around eight forty-five,” he said into the phone. “He must have made her get into the car, which means…” He spun around, glancing around the parking lot. “He must have left his car here. The car has to be here somewhere, Fee!”

  He paused, listening to Fia. “Okay, okay, I’ll start getting license plates. I’ll talk to Kaleigh and then call you back.” He snapped the phone shut. Having parked the minivan on the street, Pete, Rob, and Katy ran across the parking lot toward them.

  “You have to tell me what you saw. Where were they going?” Arlan asked.

  Kaleigh shook her head, fighting the fear creeping under her skin again. That thing in the front seat had spooked her. What was it? She wanted to ask Arlan, but was afraid to. What if her imagination had been playing tricks on her? That was possible, wasn’t it? If it was possible in life, wasn’t it possible in visions? After all, it was still just her interpretation of a scene, or whatever.

  “Kaleigh, this is important.” Arlan clasped her arm, looking into her eyes. “Macy’s in serious trouble. I think she was kidnapped by the Buried Alive Killer.”

  “The Buried Alive Killer?” Kaleigh looked at him, trying to mesh what she had seen with what her uncle was saying. That didn’t make sense. The Buried Alive Killer was a human, flesh and blood and bone. “You sure?”

  The three teens came to a splashing halt beside Kaleigh.

  “What’s going on?” Katy demanded.

  “Arlan thinks Macy, you know, the human photographer who’s been taking pictures all over town, that she’s been kidnapped by the Buried Alive Killer. That’s who I saw in my vision. It was Macy.”

  “Holy hell,” Pete swore.

  Kaleigh felt Rob’s warm touch on her wet, cold, bare arm. He didn’t respond immediately, but he didn’t need to.

  “Tell me exactly what you saw,” Arlan said. “She was in a car?”

  Macy nodded.

  “Her car? A blue Honda.”

  “I don’t know.” Kaleigh wiped rain from her eyes. It was pelting so hard that it hurt. “But she was driving. This…guy. Macy was scared. I think he had a gun.” As she spoke, more truths came to her. “She couldn’t get away from him. She was afraid he would hurt someone else if she tried to run.”

  “You know where they were going?”

  Kaleigh shook her head.

  “You think you can help me find her?”

  Kaleigh meant to say no, but before the word came out of her mouth, she realized, somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt a string. A thread really…connecting her to this human she barely knew. It hadn’t been there when she went to the refrigerator for the drinks, but now it was. “Maybe,” she whispered, looking up earnestly into her uncle’s eyes. “But I’m scared. I don’t like this.”

  “It’s okay to be scared.” He reached out and touched her cheek with the palm of his hand. His touch only lasted a second, but it was reassuring. It made her feel strong, maybe even a little confident. He believed in her, even if she didn’t b
elieve in herself.

  “You want to help?” Arlan asked the other teens.

  “Sure. Yeah,” they chimed in.

  “No. They have to take my parents’ van back,” Kaleigh insisted, panic fluttering in her chest again. “I’ll be grounded until I’m dead again if they catch me.”

  “Kaleigh, they’ll understand,” Arlan said.

  “No, they won’t. I’m already in trouble. I don’t want to get grounded.”

  He looked at her, his wet face illuminated by the neon lights of the hotel’s sign. “You think they haven’t been through this before, hon?” he asked gently.

  That thought had never occurred to her until this very moment. She’d been a wisewoman and their daughter for fifteen hundred years. Of course Michael and Cassie had dealt with her visions before. And probably all the crazy behavior that went along with them.

  Arlan turned to the teens. “Kaleigh and I have to go, but I need you guys to start writing down license plates of any vehicle you don’t recognize. Start in this parking lot and then down the streets in a two-block perimeter around the hotel. Work your way out.” He glanced at Kaleigh. “If they took her car, he must have left his here. There’s no other way to get into town except by car.” He turned back to her friends. “Somebody got a cell?”

  “I do!” Katy was practically bouncing with excitement as she held up her phone.

  Arlan turned to Kaleigh. “You’ve got her number, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, Katy, someone from the FBI will be calling you for plate numbers.”

  “The FBI? Cool.”

  “It might be Fia, but maybe someone else. You give them the plate numbers. They need the state and the plate.”

  Kaleigh felt Rob’s hand on her shoulder. “You going to be okay with this?” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear.

  She pressed her lips together, afraid she might start to cry. She was scared, but she knew this was her destiny. Aiding the sept in this way. Always had been, always would be. She didn’t understand what this human had to do with her people, but there had to be a reason why she was being called. “I’ll be fine,” she assured Rob, sounding like she meant it.